An Asian Frontier: American Anthropology and Korea, 1882–1945 by Robert Oppenheim (review)

Robert Oppenheim's An Asian Frontier: American Anthropology and Korea, 1882–1945 is a significant contribution to the history of American anthropology, going far beyond the seemingly narrow scope suggested by its title. Beginning with the question, "Why write a book about the American anthropology of Korea before 1945?" (1), Oppenheim proceeds to trace a compelling thread of theory and practice in the discipline during this critical period of professionalization.

The author successfully argues the point that our current understandings of American anthropology's engagement with Korea and the rest of Asia, which makes it largely a post-World War II development, is fundamentally false and misleading. He begins with the first American treaties with Korea in 1882, during a time when the regional focus of the discipline was certainly in Native America. However, paralleling the land-based frontier of the US Army in the American West, he advances the concept of a naval frontier, fronting on the Pacific Rim. Not only was Korea studied earlier than we commonly believe, it was also earlier than the American engagement with the Philippines or much of the Pacific. And it was also more fundamental to the discipline. There were actually many articles about Korea in the American Anthropologist before 1900, more than would be seen for many decades thereafter.

Set off by an introduction and short conclusion are seven chapters, arranged roughly chronologically. These are centered in three linked pairs. The first set explores the initial encounter, when American anthropology was largely based in museums. The first chapter, set principally at the Smithsonian Institution, traces objects as they move through networks of actors with contrasting motivations and experiences. The second chapter, broadening out to museums in New York, Philadelphia, and the Boston area, concentrates on ceramics as tokens of different regimes of value. By focusing on these earliest Korean collections, Oppenheim actually gives us an excellent case study in museum anthropology.

The second pair deals with Stewart Culin and his intellectual partner, Frank Hamilton Cushing. A self-trained anthropologist who started out in Philadelphia before moving on to the Brooklyn Museum, Culin was noted for his pioneering study of Chinese-Americans. His career was transformed by his encounter with the famed Smithsonian anthropologist at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition. Their joint collaborative research on games, which they rooted in a putative evolution from divinatory practices, was largely brought to fruition by Culin after Cushing's death in 1900. The core of these chapters explores the contested balance between independent invention and cultural diffusion, as considered between Asia and the Americas. In fact, this discussion must be considered among the very best historical treatments of either man.

The book's second half is devoted to the critical period between 1910 and 1945, when the Japanese empire ruled over the country. After a break of about a decade, the third pair of chapters treats Frederick Starr, the founder of anthropology at the University of Chicago, who taught from 1892 to 1923. Until Donald McVicker's 2012 biography of Starr, the Chicago anthropologist had been quite overlooked, even castigated in the history of American anthropology. While admitting his theoretical eclecticism, Oppenheim argues that, in fact, Starr was a much more representative figure, replacing his earlier evolutionism with more cultural explanations. Furthermore, while Starr may have been something of an imperial apologist, Oppenheim maintains that he also had a fiercely anti-imperialist side, stemming from his religiously-based pacifism. And Starr was the only anthropologist considered in this book who spent significant time in Korea.

The final case study—on Ales Hrdliĉka, the prominent physical anthropologist at the Smithsonian—is covered in a single chapter. During these interwar years, Hrdliĉka was ambivalent theoretically, combining a generalized racialism with an opposition to Japanese imperialism. In Korea, Hrdliĉka rooted his anti-Japanese feelings in his sentiments as a Czech immigrant's opposition to Nazi Germany. In both the Starr and Hrdliĉka chapters, Oppenheim effectively relates...